I'd like to refer to a description list item by name instead of number. To that effect, I've added labels to each item, but when referencing them I only get the name of the section, not of the list item. How can I change it to show a custom label for each item?

Excellent stuff; now \ref even works like expected outside of the description environment.
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l0b0Aug 10 '10 at 12:44

@Martin Heller @Andrew Stacey Do you know if it is possible to have the references in spacedlowsmallcaps font? I am using classicthesis, where description items are written using this font (the code from the style file: \renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{\hspace*{\labelsep}\spacedlowsmallcaps{#1}}‌​‌​), so when I am referencing the items I would like them to look the same as in the list.
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ElenaNov 20 '13 at 15:45

Here's a version that seems to work. There are, I think, two separate issues with what you are trying to do. One is simply to get the labels to be what you want and not according to some automatic numbering scheme. That's what the SO hack does. The other issue is to ensure that these labels refer to what you think that they are referring to. The SO hack does not address this. The point is that a label is both a label and a marker. In normal TeX, this dual role isn't visible because the marker isn't really used (well, it's used to figure out what the label should contain, but you want to override that). But when using a hyperlink package, such as hyperref.sty, the marker means something again: it's where the hyperlink goes to.

So you need to both change the label and have the marker at the right point. The former is solved by the SO hack, but the latter (as I said) is not. Either you can add the markers in explicitly, or you can subvert something that would put them in automatically. The reason they aren't there is that you are using the description environment which doesn't automatically put in the markers. By using a different listing environment, say enumerate, which does get the markers put in, we can get the desired behaviour. It's still a "hack", I'm afraid, but not a very big one.